Studio Line

Games at Joe’s studio has been the GNN way of welcoming in the New Year for at least twelve months now, and this year was no different (to last year). Joe hosted Katy (who arrived first) then myself (fresh from Monmouthshire) and Martin (came after he’d had supper).

When I got there, after limping through Bristol’s streets with a dodgy knee, I found Katy and Joe deep in Lost Cities. These cities must have been cold, since Katy was wearing a scarf and a blanket while Joe looked like he’d just come to the studio straight from his trawler. I found the completely bemusing, as I watched them place cards, pick them up and say that they’re completely screwed on the blues or some such fatalistic sentiments.

Katy insisted on splitting up the scoring to enhance the tension, only to find Joe rendering the whole process tense-less as he strolled to a win using exactly those blue cards that Katy had been throwing away.

Joe 101
Katy 77

Katy then informed me that she had soundly beat Joe at Innovation 6-1, with Joe pointing out that there’s no scoring in Innovation, you either win or you don’t.

At this point the two of them set off to buy pizza while I rest my knee. I take the opportunity to look at the games that Joe currently houses in his studio. Martin, arriving shortly afterwards, referred to them as “the dregs” but it included Lords of Vegas and Oregon. Joe later told us that more games would be transferred here as he is having work done on his kitchen. He’s not going to get any work done at all this year. While we waited for the pizza people to return, Martin and I played one round of Air, Land & Sea.

Next up, with Babylonia being nixed by Katy and Hit Z Road getting the thumbs down from me, we went for the co-op hit of the year Die crew. We started on Mission 23, somewhere near Callisto (one of Jupiter’s 69 moons, according to the thoroughly-researched narrative text) and had five tasks to complete between us. It took several attempts, but we finally nailed it (with me as commanding officer, by the way).

After this Mission 24 proved to be tricky too (six tasks, but in any order), and when we realised we had failed by the slimmest of margins, we put the game to one side and chose a new game: 5211.

This Japanese game sees every player playing two cards from their hand onto the table, revealing them simultaneously. Then, every player plays another one, then a final one in the same manner. The idea is that if the cards in front of you belong to the most common suit, then those will score. But if there are too many cards of the most common suit (seven or more) or if two suits are tied, then they don’t count for anything.

There are a couple of other rules thrown in, but that’s the jist of it. Katy began by asking if the cards had been shuffled, before playing nothing but green cards for all of round one. She continued to profess a lack of understanding of the game.

Some slightly over-designed cards from 5211

Joe 29
Martin 15
Andrew 15
Katy 12

Next was a couple of rousing games of Crokinole. Joe and I were in a team against Martin and Katy and despite a few good shots from Katy (which belied her insistence she was bad at the game) it was Joe and I that won two games, without Katy and Martin scoring a single point. Actually, it was mostly Joe who demonstrated an almost pro level of skill, perhaps putting to rest his reputation for being bad at flicking games.

Next, seeing as how it was too late for Lords of Vegas or Babylonia, we saw the evening out with some lighter fare. First was Mamma Mia, complete with faux Italian accents and Katy’s over-excitement at getting the Mamma Mia card and, therefore, being in charge of dealing out the deck of cards announcing each ingredient in turn.

Katy got off to an excellent start, completing three recipes in round one while I did none at all. I didn’t recover but Martin did and managed to match her at the end of the final round. Martin looked up the tie breaker while Katy dutifully put away the game. Alas, the tiebreaker was “the player with most ingredient cards left in their hand” and Katy couldn’t remember at all. They decided to rejoice in their shared victory.

Katy 5
Martin 5
Joe 3
Andrew 2

And now, with time ticking on (almost eleven o’clock) we played our final game as a quartet: The Mind Extreme. We battled through the first five rounds until we arrived at round six with three shurikens and two lives. Incredibly, round six began with a flurry of cards played to red and we had to stop ourselves and play a shuriken to try and find out where we were in the grand scheme of things. A few cards later we played a second shuriken and then, finally, we ended after a tense stand off between Katy and Martin who eventually played their final cards to differing piles.

We revealed the white pile to show just one mistake: a transposed seven and eight. So close. We needed a perfect run through red, though. It wasn’t looking hopeful.

Imagine our surprise when we succeeded! The crazed opening to the round had, in fact, been us perfectly in sync. We were amazed.

And perhaps too complacent as we quickly came unstuck on the “easier” round seven. A bit of an anti-climax but at least I am now a member of the “I’ve managed to get past round six in The Mind Extreme” gang and I can wear its badge (with its very small text) with pride.

Once Katy had gone, Martin, Joe and I finished off with Kribbeln: the game of complete luck unless you’re winning, in which case it’s all skill. We all had our moments of failure but while Martin and I had two blank rounds, Joe had four.

Martin 19
Andrew 17
Joe 13

And now we were finally done at quarter past eleven. My knee had rested enough, so I was confident about my return and I was pleased to get a little more gaming in before the end of the year. Looking forward to 2020! Cheers, all!

New to GNN in 2019

I had a trawl back through the archives for 2019 to look for the games we played at GNN for the first time this year and counted 85! (I blame Sam). Here's my pick of 20 that were played a few times and seemed to go down particularly well. Which were your favourites and have I missed anything?

Gold Fever - we all loved chucking grit in each other's sacks.
Bring Your Own Book - make up your own punchline.
Western Legends - something about poker and brothels?
Maskmen - delightful once decoded.
Northern Pacific - so simple, so evil.
Res Arcana - I hate fantasy themes. I hate engine-building. So why am I hooked on this?
Senators - nasty nasty auctions.
Kariba - Knizia goes to the waterhole.
LAMA - Knizia revamps UNO.
Sol - must play this more next year...
Belratti - damn that cunning forger!
Orbit - I should probably try this.
Q.E. - I bid 10 quintillion!
Pax Pamir 2nd edition - most attractive game of the year?
Stinker - the biggest laughs?
Memoarrr - now where was that damn pink octopus...
The Crew: Quest for the 9th Planet - the theme may be a little lacking but the trick-taking is exquisite.
The Mind Extreme - does what it says on the tin.
HurlyBurly - yay catapults!
Letter Jam - E*CE??ENT

Merry Christmas all and thanks for another game-tastic year.

∞≠∆≈≤µ

With Andrew a late-drop-out, Martin's suggestion of a six-player opener looked in danger, until Adam H became a late addition. With him around the table were Adam T (who brought After Eights), Ian, Martin and myself (Sam) with Katy en route, delayed by social activities. When she finally arrived we had Letter Jam set up and ready to go, Adam and Ian had been informed of the rules, and poor Katy barely had time to tell us she'd bought a chocolate yule log (which I hid from the boys) before she was sat down and the game began. Katy immediately looked at her own cards and had to be given a new word, but after that the game was relatively serene, apart Katy's insistence that she couldn't get her letters and Martin telling her it was obvious.

Ian also spent some time looking baffled, but as it turned out we collectively did rather a good job - everyone identified their words and Martin and Adam T added extra letters at the end: the game rated us delicious, which is our best effort yet. "How the fuck do you get 115 points?!" Martin exclaimed, looking at the scorecard, before realising we'd need to take on the six-letter challenge. One for next time, maybe.

It was all so exciting and After Eight-fuelled that I didn't take any photos, but here's one from another time.

I was going to try and tempt the Adams to try Ragusa, but Adam T had a game called Christmas Tree with him and all things considered it seemed inappropriate to pass on it. Katy joined us while Ian, Adam H and Martin played Azul and made pointed comments about their game finishing before ours started.

But Christmas Tree mechanically is rather simple - a drafting game where you add a tile to your tree and look for multiple ways of scoring: patterns of bauble colours or shapes, lights, candy, gingerbread men. Where it gets complicated is in the scoring, as some things will score and some won't, and you won't know which scoring tiles the other players have chosen until you've laid your first couple of tiles.

Adam went into an early lead, but Katy pulled him back mid-game. I'm pretty duff at these multiple-consideration games (it reminded me of Circle the Wagons in that regard) but it was rather fun all the same:

Adam 156
Katy 153
Sam 106

By which time Azul had concluded...

Ian 70
Martin 69
Adam H 65

and Adam had revenge in a game of NMBR9 which happened so fast I missed the opportunity to take pictures again...

Adam 81
Martin 59
Ian 40

Now back as a six, there was a brief chocolate yule log interlude courtesy of Katy, before we settled on the last game of the night: First Contact. It was still in its shrink-wrap and nobody knew the rules, but fortunately that didn't stop Martin diving in and teaching us on the spot. Here's what happened:

Ian, Katy and I were aliens who flew to Earth in ancient times and established contact with the Egyptians - specifically, Martin and the Adams. We managed to communicate the meaning of three hieroglyphs to them (for instance, metal, pointed, alive) before translation got more difficult, and we needed to communicate meanings via a kind-of process of elimination on a 5x5 grid of things (very like Codenames) that shared some facets of meaning.

Both teams have the same 25 words to hand, but the Egyptians don't know the attendant hieroglyph and the aliens do. The Egyptians can work out a meaning by indicating a few cards (for instance the lion, spear, snake cards to get the hieroglyph for Danger) but as we discovered it is possible for things to get lost in translation.

Conversely, the alien team are trying to get the Egyptians to identify specific cards (see: Codenames again) by clueing them hieroglyphs - if the Egyptians identify the card in question, the active alien puts a token on it and gives another to anyone who successfully identified it. Note it's the active alien: although there are aliens and Egyptians in teams, the game is actually won by individuals: an alien wins by getting rid of three tokens, or an earthling wins by collecting three tokens.

Although it was the wrong time of the evening for Ian, who looked like he was starting to melt towards the end, I think we were all rather enamoured of First Contact in the end, although Martin caused a mini-contretemps when he changed his final guess after the Adams had revealed theirs - and Katy had given away some information! Martin insisted he'd noticed neither and was the winner, although the Adams did not look convinced.

To be fair though, ending the night on an argument about what was said and done in the distant past did make it really feel like a proper Christmas-themed evening. Thanks everybody!

Handrags and Karambolags

As Andrew had missed Tuesday, he - fortunately for me - didn't need much enticing to join me on Thursday. I was originally scheduled for a works party, but I was so tired I could only drink red wine and learn the rules to a heavy euro.

Oh, except Ragusa is not actually that heavy at all. From the same designer as sleepy rocket Calimala, Ragusa features the similar actions-beget-actions dynamic as its predecessor, only here we are building the titular city, rather than trading silk. I'd played it through myself earlier in the year, so could explain the basics to Andrew - excluding my © classic overlooked rule - along with the special rule for two players, although with an audience of Stan - mainly interested in the snacks - and friend Katie - mainly interested in going out to the pub - it was a real rules-sweats situation and frankly I think I did pretty well to hold it together. Before you could say "Stan, don't eat all the crisps" we were away, and doing Ragusa-y things such as gathering wood/stone/ore/olives/grapes in order to build/make silver/oil/wine, contribute to the construction of the city wall and trade with merchants from the high seas.

Thematically it gets the big EURO rubber stamp, but like Calimala the non-interactive, ponderous air is largely absent. We did a bit of pondering, but neither Andrew and I are real zero-sum gamers and we played with a mostly exploratory air: I built a lot of walls, whereas Andrew traded with the traders and constructed the cathedral. In the fields, the gentle gathering is done in isolation, but in the city any house built in a particular location activates all previous houses there from all players, lending the decisions a fruity sense of reluctance. Once all houses are placed, the game ends, and - again, much like the earlier game - it really doesn't last long. Not with two, anyway. My longest-wall beat back Andrews most-trades, aided by a slightly fortuitous end-game scoring: it was something like

Sam 80
Andrew 68

And despite the rules, the crisps, some bedtime shenanigans and birthday requests from Stan, it was not even half past nine. We followed the deli-style meat of Ragusa with Karambolage, Haba's pre-Push It (we described it pushitty, which perhaps does it a disservice) game of flicking pucks into other pucks. In both games I sped into an early lead - in the first I made the somewhat panicked and ludicrous decision to stick on nine when Andrew was on seven. He wrapped that up pretty quickly:

Andrew 10
Sam 9

...and then won the second game too as the Considerable Yips descended on me and I repeatedly picked up nifty points only to chuck them away on easy shots! Andrew wasn't perfect either...

But he did well enough to claim a second win:

Andrew 10
Sam 4

And although the night was still relatively young, Andrew headed home in order to drink himself into a stupor - I presume - over the exit polls. Nice to play a relatively breezy Euro, and Karambolage is always fun!

Babble on

This week's GNN was a relatively sparse affair, with just three of us joining Martin at his kitchen table - Katy, Adam T, and myself (Sam). Adam was last to arrive, and we realised if we started playing Gold Fever he would undoubtedly show up. This proved to be the case, but we simply dealt him in a bag, and he instantly drew two grey gravel. On his next go he drew two white gravel. "It's one of those luck-pushing games" he realised, while Martin complained that I gave him my gravel when he didn't have any gold. Katy gave him gravel too; but he just didn't know, as he was answering the door...

Sam - 4 gold!
Everyone else - Can't remember. Think Katy had one.

Forgot to take photos

Then we started on the first 'proper' game of the night with Babylonia. Katy wasn't keen, but Martin said she'd enjoy it now she knew what was going on, and this was at least partly true. It reminded me most of Samurai, with certain things being scored when surrounded, although the placement was also a bit Blue Lagoony, and the various nobles also put me in mind of Tigris and Euphrates.

it's so simple

That's not a bad ancestry, and although the game is very abstract, the turns were surprisingly quick. Adam emerged triumphant from whatever it was, thematically speaking, we were actually doing (I was never entirely clear) causing much gnashing of teeth from Martin. Katy lost, but wanted it noted that she led for most of the game. Another solid entry in the good doctor's ever-lengthening list of games that make you wail with despair.

Adam 118
Martin 113
Sam 111
Katy 109

me, and the the farmers

Then it was Die Crew again, so we all suited up and launched ourselves into trick-taking, google-translated space, where the trickiness of the missions is foreshadowed in the confusing commentary. Despite my failings - I was usually culpable - we completed Missions 19-22 with only a few dead cosmonauts along the way. We were so submerged in the narrative that I entirely forgot to take photos again!

Imagine the Crew here

Next to the table was either Montage, or Maskmen. Katy said she didn't want to play a word game, so Maskmen it was. Despite several plays, we - or Katy and I anyway - still needed to check with Martin what cards could be played when. I think it was new to Adam, and as last person to play he was surprised to find he couldn't legally play cards after we three had. He checked if it worked with four, and Martin - who'd just dumped three cards - assured him it worked perfectly well. Adam recovered from this indignity happening again moments later to recover, but not enough: Martin won both the opening rounds and, even though I could have drawn level in round three, we awarded him the win in favour of moving on...

Martin 4
Sam 2
Katy and Adam: 0

Forgot to take photos again. Come back, Andrew!

Adam was keen to try Hurlyburly and everyone else was more than amenable. After Martin explained the rules to Adam...

I made up for lost time by embarking on a spree of slow-motion movies that failed to capture any of the pivotal moments...

...the most satisfying being when my one and only block knocked down Martin's tower as he stood on the verge of victory. Adam won the first game, and although I thought there was a second this morning both my notes and Martin insist there wasn't. This is slightly alarming considering I was drinking alcohol-free beer.

confused again

Adam then started making going home noises, but we cajoled one final game out of him, which was Karambolage. I sped into an early 4-point lead but then got the Considerable Yips, and remained stuck there for the duration. Martin scored big but when bust when he sent pucks flying off the table. Adam managed to miss a shot from about 4 centimetres away; as he walked into the kitchen in disgust Katy rolled the same dice and missed an even easier shot...

Before Martin surged up to a resplendent finish to claim the win:

Martin 10
Sam 4
Katy 3
Adam 0

Adam's walk of disgust then turned into a slightly longer drive home, and it was Katy's turn to be cajoled: this time into playing The Mind Extreme. She reasoned that she was terrible at The Mind and would be even worse at this, which actually proved to be not the case right up until it was on level 5 - when she sat pat on the 46 and pooh-poohed the idea of re-syncing until she realised what re-syncing was.

 I think we crashed out on level 6, but it was a decent effort considering these were all played face-down...

dastardly fifteen

And with the time nearing 11, it was pumpkin o'clock for us - we headed home with another little chapter of GNN history allotted it's parcel of time, drama, comedy, and too many smutty innuendoes to begin listing here involving almost every aspect of Hurlyburly you could mention. 

Ten of the Best

On Saturday night, Chris, Jacquie and I convened over their kitchen table for what would turn out to be something of an epic night of short games. After tea - which also involved a discussion of tactical voting with the kids - the three (relative) grown-ups kicked things off with Azul. Chris mentioned that Jacquie was evil in Azul, and I noticed with some alarm that I was sitting to her left. As it happened though, Chris got the worst of the broken tiles in a fairly close-run battle:

Jacquie 82
Sam 80
Chris 69

Before we moved on to slightly sillier fare with Letter Jam. For the uninitiated, Letter Jam is a co-op where everyone is trying to help everyone else figure out what letters they have - like Just One, your own cards face away from you - in order to figure out their word. It's surprisingly easy to go wrong, even for seasoned Scrabble players like Jacquie. We tried again - Ashton joining us for the second attempt - but once again failed. A clever game though.

one I took earlier

By now it was approaching nine so we kicked the kids into bed and re-introduced Jacquie to the murky world of High Society. Despite our warnings, she spent too much money in our first game and ended destitute. I won with something like ten points, whereas Chris had both the x2 cards but with no points at all, it was double nothing. In the second I grabbed to early high cards but undid my good work - I bid to force up the prices of two subsequent cards and both times Chris and Jacquie deviously passed on me, leaving me points-rich but cash-poor. Chris won this one.

Jacquie then retired to bed and Chris introduced me to Jaipur, the game of trading for two in India. It has been around for years but I'd never actually played it, and I can see why it has a good reputation: the basic idea is collecting cards and cashing them in for chips (chips being points) but the way it works allows for safety-first or luck-pushing and spoiling tactics galore as you see what your opponent is picking up and play accordingly.

We liked it so much we played it twice, although in between them we also had a double-crack at Blitzkrieg!

This is another two-player, but rather than trading you are trying to kill each other in a "20 minute" reenactment of WWII. One player is the Axis, the other the Allies, and you are drawing chits from a bag and deciding where to lay them in five theatres of war across the globe, each subdivided into two or three campaigns. Adding a chit swings momentum your way on a battle track, and when a campaign is finished whoever is in the lead on the battle track claims the points. Most places on a campaign also give rewards as well, so although the mechanics are very simple, the decisions are extremely meaningful. I really like this and Chris seemed enamoured of it too, despite me claiming a win just as he was one turn from a 7point swing in his favour...

After our second play of Jaipur we realised it was rather late however, so we finished up with NMBR9, deciding halfway through to go through the deck twice and build some epic, high-scoring constructions. As always moments of delight and confidence were outweighed by our castigating fate, God, kismet and anything else you could mention as the pieces refused to align meaningfully. Kind of like life, one might say.

Ten games in one night - and very excellent games too. Thanks again!

One, two, three...

I was late to this week's games night, arriving just as Stanley stepped down from the table, allowing me to take his place in a game of Medium. Joe, Sam (hosting), Martin and Katy were also there and had already played three games of Hurlyburly, with Katy winning twice and Sam once.

In Medium, each player forms two teams with the two people either side of them. Thus I was paired with Katy (on my left) and Sam (to my right). Each player has a hand of cards with words on them, and each couple takes turns to play cards to the table and on the count of three both say a word that links the two. If you both say the same word, you pick up a scoring jewel type thing. If not, then you get the chance to try again with the two new words.

Morse?

For example, Katy played "toaster" and Martin replied by playing "butter." On the count of three they simultaneously spoke, with Katy saying Crumpet and Martin saying Bread. Martin, appalled at this missed easy win, asked the rest of us if we all thought "bread." I said yes, but Sam said he'd thought of "knife" giving us all a glimpse of what Martin, Katy and Sam usually put in their toasters. Anyway, Katy and Martin went again to try to link Crumpet and Bread. Katy said Jam and Martin said Muffin. With an air of desperation, they tried again but still couldn't gel, saying Cake and Scone.

The highlight was Martin and Joe. The words were Hospital and Band. Martin said "wrist" and Joe said "aid." A fail but surely those two new words pointed to only one thing. Joe seemed reluctant to admit that he was thinking what everyone else was thinking but he came good when it mattered

"1, 2, 3, wank." they chorused. And a little bit of gaming history was written.

I struggled a bit. Sam and I were on different wavelengths and Katy confused me by pairing my Caribbean with the word Telescope and then saying Submarine. Was Caribbean Telescope slang for a submarine? It baffled me all evening until she and I were walking back home and she realised that she'd got telescope confused with periscope. She still did well, though.

Katy and Martin 6
Andrew and Katy 5
Sam and Andrew 4
Joe and Sam 3
Martin and Joe 3

After this was another new word game called Letter Jam. In this game each player is given a five letter word made up of five cards with letters on, that they do not know. Every player has one letter at a time on show such that everyone else can see it but them. Then people discuss what words they can make out of the visible cards, plus a wild card and a "public" card which everyone can see.

"I can make a three letter word that uses the wild card," someone may suggest. If no one can think of anything better (unlikely) then that word is spelt out by handing out numbered tokens. For example, Sam would get the 1 token since he had the D, the 2 token would go on the wild card since no one has an O and Martin gets the 3 token since he has a G.

After several rounds the idea is to work out each of your letters and, therefore, the word. Everyone except me succeeded, having been stymied by the W (I thought my word was Chats, turned out to be Watch). But it was fun. And I especially liked the entirely nonsensical scoring system. We ended with 66 points, which relates to three strawberries which, in turn, relates to "it's yummy."

So, having scored Yummy, we continued with the co operative theme with Die Crew. Finally, I got to try this exciting new trick taker. I was eased in with mission 2. We failed and after the second attempt we decided to skip the easy intro and go back to where they left off: mission 15. Now we started to succeed as we left Mars and set off towards Jupiter. We cleared 15, 16 and 17 before failing on 18 and Sam's ambivalence towards another try saw us finish up there, somewhere near the asteroid belt.

Next we played Karambolage. It's meant to be for four players max, but Sam insisted it could be played by one hundred players... although the last eighty might not get a turn.

Joe had a case of the Can't Stops as he racked up a six point move but kept going for one move too many and lost it all. I specialised in near misses - it looked like I knew what I was doing but I was actually clueless. Sam took an early lead but Martin hit 10 points to nab the win.

Martin 10
Sam 7
Joe 0
Katy 0
Andrew 0

Then Katy and I left at a sensible time, leaving the three remainers to play The Mind Extreme. It seems they beat the curse of round six and got to round nine, as Sam texted me later. Thanks all for a surprisingly team based evening.

Photo credit: Sam.